Friday, March 11, 2011

So apparently we've definitely established that in the pokemon universe: DEAD PEOPLE CAN BECOME POKEMON. They can then be crammed into pokeballs and forced to do your bidding.
I'm not kidding. Meet YAMASK.

His description in Pokemon Black:
"Each of them carries a mask that used to be its face when it was human. Sometimes they look at it and cry"

and in Pokemon White:
"These Pokémon arose from the spirits of people interred in graves in past ages. Each retains memories of its former life."

Between this and the fact that the pokemon already looks like it's crying is really amazingly creepy. ((And a little bit cool.))

It's definitely a very interesting dark element in an otherwise happy and perky game that revolves around people and their happy little animal-monster companions, although if you think about it, the concept is teetering on a dark bent already. People are sending their children out to go battle people with other animal-monsters, and capture wild, untrained ones in pokemon balls.

Realistically, you could get yourself seriously freaking hurt if you tried to tangle with a twenty foot rock snake armed with a tiny water spitting Newt or the like, but in the DS games, you merely risk getting knocked out, not getting turned into a red smear on a cave wall.

I often regale (bore) people silly by pointing out that I have actually played an pokemon game where the trainers and pokemon could get hurt, or even killed trying to catch particularly dangerous wild pokemon, but really, it was a pretty Kick-Ass roleplay. My trainer actually lost their hand being cocky and stupid, but thats what you get assuming that you're going to take on an pokemon with a blade on it's head by yourself. It really really is a fun idea and people should try it more often.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

So apparently I don't have the ability, necessarily, to predict when game is going to be off for the day. ((Sadly we're off again this week, because of my husbands job... again...))

((Please excuse me while I thrash around on the floor in withdrawal.))

Anyway: Apparently I do have a superpower, although it's a fairly useless on. I shall call it my "Doom Sense".

Doom Sense tells me when a game is about to take a nosedive into the mizzenheap. ((Or septic tank if you'd prefer less creative words.))

A month or so ago, my Doom Sense kicked in. At the time it was fairly mild, but piercing. Kind of like someone blowing a shrill whistle a couple rooms away... but I'm getting ahead of myself. First I have to explain a little about the game, but not so much that it's entirely clear what game I was playing. Unless maybe you're part of it. If you are part of it: HI. I'M SORRY FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAS YET TO HAPPEN TO RUIN YOUR FUN. I REALLY AM.

Anyway: The game started out a while back, it was based on an fairly popular series and that was cool. There was art of the characters, and all that kind of fun stuff, and the artists were using this in part to pay their bills. Cool. The only down side was that this technically kinda went straight into the dark gray-to-black area of the host where the RP was set because most of the characters were coming into existence via cash, and not via any other kind of unpaid event, and the site kind of frowns on that because they'd rather have your money instead, kthnxbai.

No one really made a big deal about that however so no one really got in trouble for THAT. But as the game went on, we started having a problem that became later nicknamed "Carpet Shop". The staff would work with players. They would allow people to set up plots, character histories, character ideas, character developments... pat you on the head and tell you how AMAZING an idea you'd had and weren't you so clever? YES YOU WERE! YES YOU WERE YOU LITTLE ROLEPLAYER YOU! 8D

... And then they'd turn around and carpet yank the idea and tell you sorry, they HAD in fact actually agreed to everything a week to a month ago, but they'd changed their minds and you couldn't do that now. They however, apparently could do anything they wanted. Past lives for their characters? HELL YEAH. Past lives for anyone else? Nope, totally forbidden, including you, person, who we encouraged because we loved your idea so much. Yeah you've been RPing out hints of it for months because we said you could and we all loved it, but now you have to stop. Sorry.

It was things like that OVER and OVER. And every time someone turned around, the staff had given themselves a brand new Ultra Amazing Shinything. And their new UAS was of course massively integral to plot and massively powerful, and could beat all of your characters, at once, with one hand tied behind their back while suffering from the flu. And they had the flu, to show you they were human too and oh they suffered. THEY SUFFERED. It was sad.

This obviously started to build up into a giant wall of discontent, people sitting on it and wondering if it had happened to anyone else, but kind of afraid to ask because everyone wanted to be liked, everyone hoped the staff would like them and maybe, maybe give THEM a scrap of shiny-things, let a plot through, let a character not played by the staff actually do something of more importance than tie their shoe... and no one said anything for a long long time.

And then one magical day, the staff, who were also the artists, decided that the quit. If you didn't have all your art yet well... you'd get it..............................................someday. Never mind that you'd paid three-weeks-work-of-grocery money to GET your multiple art stages. You'd get it......eh. Someday. whenever.

This set off a shockwave through the carefully layered walls, and people started actually discussing everything that had hugely upset them, especially the time after time after time that not one, not two, but dozens and dozens of promises had been given and then broken.

There was a huge outpouring of bile, and then someone stepped in and said: Hell with this, we like this rp's basic idea, we're going to see if we can continue this.

And for a while they did. Any it was good. And plots ACTUALLY HAPPENED. And the staff DID NOT pat themselves on the back with new UAS's every week or so, and IT WAS GOOD. AND THE PEOPLE WERE HAPPY.
And even better, they decided that there would be no more Canon characters brought in, because it had created just too damn much strife. AND THAT WAS TERRIFIC AND EVERYONE LOVED IT.

...And then the doom sense tingled, as the lone remaing artist started taking, with staff permission. NEW. CUSTOM SLOTS.

And the doom sense said "This is some bad shit there. Yeah they need money, but they're not staff anymore... Shouldn't they just be selling art, not characters?

And Doom Sense was right. For lo and behold. In the land in which no more canon characters were to ever be released, ever. THEY RELEASED ONE OF THE TWO CENTRIC MOST POWERFUL CHARACTERS OF ALL.

And the Doom Sense spake and it said: "Hell, I don't care who got this thing, This is the beginning of the end son, the old bad shit has come back like a cancer, nothing good can come of this! Avoid that crap like the plague, woman!"

And I'm kind of thinkin' Doom Sense might be right about this one. No matter how many awesome players you've got it's kinda hard to run anything on broken promises, no matter how good the behind the scenes reasoning might have seemed.

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About Me

An low level, and vengeful Domestic Goddess (and Mother). Happily married,
known to be fond of Reading, Writing, Art Making, Knitting, and full blown Geekery. If seen: do not stand between this individual and her favorite books, comics, or crafting materials.